


Implicit Memories of You

by ninhursag



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alex Manes Needs a Hug, Amnesia, Canon Related, Handprint (Roswell), M/M, Maria DeLuca is a good person, Maria DeLuca/Michael Guerin Break Up, Michael Guerin Loves Alex Manes, Michael Guerin is really sweet, Nora Truman was a wonderful mom, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24698410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninhursag/pseuds/ninhursag
Summary: Michael wakes up, midstep, with no direct memories after entering the pod as a child. But he recognizes the person he's with, implicitly.Kind of a canon divergent version of 2x11 but you can take it as you like. Amnesia, handprints and true love, Malex style.
Relationships: Michael Guerin/Alex Manes
Comments: 64
Kudos: 320





	Implicit Memories of You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lambourn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lambourn/gifts).



> No real warnings, nothing bad happens onscreen. Michael is very sweet.
> 
> For Lambourn on occasion of her birthday ❤️
> 
> Big thanks to daughterofelros for audiencing for me!

He wakes up standing steady on his feet and confused. Part of him thinks he should be groggy, that-- but he's not, it's like he just started from here, midstep. This is the first day of his… whatever.

Whatever?

It's someone's house, this place where he is, with warm looking furniture and art on the walls. Also.

There's a guy tied to the chair in the middle of the room, with furious dark eyes. Zip ties on his hands, soft black hair in his face but not hiding his even, sharp features. Broad shoulders and visible strength in him as he struggled frantically. 

The guy is the most attractive person he's ever seen. He's pretty sure he's seen plenty of people even if he doesn't remember much but there can't be a competition.

The guy is looking at him like -- "Guerin," he hisses frantically. "Guerin, please don't do this."

He looks around, down at himself, and then over the room. There's a table with some kind of jerry-built device on it that makes his eyes narrow, tools around it. There are no other people in the room, so the guy is talking to him. "Guerin," he tastes the word on his tongue. "Who is that? That's me?" It doesn't sound right.

The guy, he slumps down like the fight was just punctured out of him by what he heard. A popped balloon. "Yeah," his voice gets soft too, punched out. "It worked, didn't it? You don't remember."

He-- Guerin, if that's his name-- he flinches. "Hey, hey, it's ok," his own voice comes out frantic, concerned. This guy, he wants to make this better, right away. He really wants that, for him to be better. "Let me get you loose, it's ok."

At first he doesn't even bother looking around for something to cut through the ties. All his tools are easy to hand, in his mind, he can feel that. Except they're not. He frowns, rubbing his forehead. He can feel where his powers are but he can't touch them, like they're on the other side of a wall.

Like whoever the guy here with him is, his identity, is on the other side of that wall too.

He--Guerin-- weird, that's definitely not what his mother called him? Ok, he remembers her, kiss on the cheek, "hide under there, love, let's be quiet together," murmured into his mind like it was a game and they were safe and-- 

He shakes his head. There are tools on the table, including a pair of pliers. That'll do.

"Guerin," the guy, the beautiful one, whispers and his mouth looks so soft, there's an instinct to touch it he doesn't want to fight.

Instead he kneels down and, carefully, carefully, cuts through the zip ties, avoiding skin. There are marks there, the guy fought the ties hard, has been trying to get out for a while. He runs his fingers over the marks, a gentling touch, and listens for the soft relieved sigh that tells him his hands are welcome, that they are offering comfort. "You're ok," Guerin, because why not, whispers. "It's ok."

The guy makes a sound, a half laugh, with sarcasm Guerin can taste shot all through it. "There's a bomb on the table," he says. "When it goes off, it's going to kill you."

Guerin hears what isn't said, kill _you_. Not us. No worry about himself there. "Let me worry about that," he says. "I'm the shipbuilder's son, I'm pretty sure I can defuse it." 

"The shipbuilder's son?" Those dark eyes are wide now. Bright in the dim light. "What do you remember? Exactly?"

Guerin shrugs, still checking the guy over, with his hands now that it's clearly permitted. Helps him rub the feeling back into obviously hurt wrists. 

Otherwise, he's bruised, but not much else, not too badly hurt. His left leg ends abruptly, loose sweatpants tied around where it stops. That will make getting him out of here harder, but that's ok.

"The last thing I remember is getting on the ship, and going into the pod," he says, after a moment, because he can see that clearly. He'd been small then, snuggled against his mother's warm side, holding her hand with fingers interwoven and safe. "Shipbuilder is wrong, the wrong word. Grower. She grew the ship, so we'd be safe." 

_'You'll sleep, sweetheart,' she'd said, 'and when we've come to a good place, I'll wake you up and no time at all will have passed.'_

"Obviously, I've lost time here," he says after a moment, while the guy stares at him, open mouthed. "I'm sorry, I know I know you. I can feel that, I mean I know you're my… " he shakes his head, the language he's speaking doesn't have that word. "What's your name?" He asks instead.

"Alex. Alex Manes." Yes, that's it. Alex closes his mouth. 

"Alex," Guerin tastes the name on his tongue and smiles. He cups the guy, Alex, Alex's chin in his hand and his smile widens when Alex melts into his touch, lips parting a little. Yes, this is… this one. This is his one. "Don't be scared, you don't have to be, I'll keep you safe."

Alex stiffens and sobs, just once, strangled, in a way that hurts to hear. "No," he says. "No, Michael, the bomb. My brother. You have to go, you have to get out of here."

Michael. That sounds better than Guerin. More right. He looks Alex right in the eye and strokes his cheek. "It's ok," he says and feels the smile stretching his mouth. "You can trust me, I will, I will keep you safe, no matter what."

It's obviously the wrong thing to say, Alex really looks like he's going to outright cry, just for another second before going terrifyingly brutally blank, like a wall has just come down between them.

"Let's worry about that when you're out of here," Alex says. And then, "I need a weapon, Guerin."

Michael nods his understanding, not arguing that he is all the weapon Alex needs. There's a knife on the table with the tools and he puts the hilt into Alex's battered hands as if that will make any difference in the end. Maybe it will.

Alex's grip is solid, his hands are calloused. Gun hand, knife hand. Soldier's hands, a protector's hands. They protect each other, then. That's good, that's a good way to be.

Alex takes a deep breath, then another and another, visibly forcing himself to relax. Still blank. "The bomb," he says. "They said you wouldn't remember building it."

Michael turns to look at the device and shrugs unevenly. He's not sure he wants to know what he did or why. "I don't. Doesn't mean I don't remember how to wreck it."

He pauses, frowns at Alex, who is bruised and down a leg and so clearly having been brought here unwilling, bound and hurt. Who is not scared because of adrenaline alone. "When… I built it? Did I hurt you? I mean, I didn't, I didn't?"

Alex's eyebrows both go up at once. He laughs painfully and shakes his head. "Fuck, no. Michael, never. You only built it because they threatened to hurt me. You never… you have never hit me, never, and I'm sorry."

Michael is relieved and confused all at once. Sorry? For what?

Alex squeezes his eyes shut. "The bomb, Michael. Let's focus on that?"

"Ok, ok." Michael can do that. He runs a gentle hand down Alex's shoulder, keeping the touch light. Alex shivers and opens his eyes, just looking at him, just like that. Michael desperately wants to kiss him.

Soon. 

The device isn't complicated. He would have known he was the builder even if Alex hadn't told him, the workings are too precisely familiar, the product of a known mind and there is no one else who builds like this.

"This wouldn't have hurt you," he assures Alex as he works on it, pulling out the parts that make it deadly, responding to bodies like his and his alone. "The DNA triggers are very specific."

Alex glares at him. "I'm aware. It's not me I'm worried about."

Michael shrugs but doesn't argue. It's easy enough. The more he looks the more he realizes the mechanism was even more precise than he’d thought. It wouldn’t just not kill humans, it was keyed to his own DNA more deeply than that. 

"They said, Flint said, you'd have the memory of a child," Alex whispers, watching him work. "That I'd watch you die."

Michael just shakes his head while he finishes the disassembly. "I don't remember, but I know things," he offers. Smiles over his shoulder. "I'm not a child. I'll keep you safe, like I promised."

Alex flinches again, cutting through his icy facade, something about those words. Michael swallows, wondering if he's promised that before. And failed? 

Well, not this time. This time he could, he would happily shoulder anything to keep his promise.

**

Alex's prosthetic is in the other room, casually abandoned. Michael frowns at it, it's not great, it’s bound to cause more pain than it needs to. "Why haven't I built you something better?" he asks.

Alex's mouth curls and he shakes his head. Michael’s side still feels warm from having Alex lean against him, full bodied and strong. "We haven't been on those kinds of terms much since I lost the leg."

Michael blinks at him. "Well, I will now."

Alex looks away, downcast. "Yeah. Maybe." He can’t quite believe this, Michael can tell. 

That’s ok, Michael doesn't challenge it either, he doesn't need to, he can prove himself fine. He kneels down instead to help Alex get the prosthetic on. Alex is bright under his hands, almost vibrating. Michael wants to kiss him again, to feel the taste of him on his tongue, familiar and forgotten.

Now is not the time, they are in danger here. But he enjoys watching Alex’s forearms move, muscle ripple under taut skin. The graceful play of his hands. Even the scarred residual limb under his sweatpants, gone beyond Michael’s ability to heal, has its own familiar warmth. Michael has touched here before, he knows it, he can see it in Alex’s eyes, reflected at him, wide and knowing.

He watches Alex’s eyes, trying to be cold, to slam down barriers, watches how he can’t quite do it, and that tells him to be careful. It’s better when Alex is solid on his feet, Alex seems better, but not great.

It will be better when they’re safe.

**

There's a truck out front, run ragged, but radiating something like affection. Michael's powers are coming back slowly, a trickle now, but he can feel the mechanical not quite purr of something built and rebuilt under his hands and mind welcoming him home.

It's deeply satisfying to climb into the cab, Alex next to him, in a place that’s his. The seat cradles him.

“Your keys are under the mat,” Alex tells him quietly, and Michael smiles at him for it. 

When the ignition turns, there is music coming from the radio, all at once totally familiar and incredibly strange. “It’s beautiful,” Michael whispers and shakes his head.

Alex frowns at him, looking up from the phone he’d recovered with his prosthetic. Michael’s phone apparently. “What is? Your ‘my wife cheated on me and my dog ran away with her music’?”

That makes Michael grin, but he shakes his head. “No, just… the music. It wasn’t allowed, where I-- at home.”

“Wait, so that’s true?” Alex sputters, like he’d expected it to not be. “I didn’t buy it, with how into it you are. That your people didn't have music.”

Michael raises an eyebrow. “I sure am into it,” he says, with an agreeable lascivious smirk that Alex looks away from immediately. He tries again. “I mean, we had it, it just wasn’t allowed. The--” he frowns, searching for the words. “Government--no, no, no the Commune? Alighting? They didn’t want-- we had to hide it, you know?”

“You really remember that?” Alex asks, looking back at him, wonderingly. “I don’t think that was what the drug they gave you was supposed to do.” 

“I don’t know much. I was a little kid,” Michael says and shrugs. “I was lucky, you know, I had my mom. She made sure everything was ok, we had nothing to worry about.” 

He doesn’t expect Alex to look stricken, heartbroken at that. The stark lines of his face going set and sad, instead of cold. “Oh,” he whispers. He looks like he’s going to say something else, but nothing comes out.

They drive to a house out in the hills. It’s small, not bone familiar the way that Alex is, the way that the truck he’s driving is, with a seat that’s clearly adapted to his ass. There’s a woman, waiting out front.

She’s beautiful, objectively, Michael can see that, darker than Alex, smaller, with a worried smile and hair a mess of unraveled curls. He feels warm toward her, soft.

“You came,” Alex calls to her. “Thank you for coming.”

“You called me,” says the woman and looks from one to the other. "Guerin, are you ok?" She reaches for him and he lets her pull him into a hug.

"I'm fine, but--" he starts, looking back at Alex who is now looking away, down on the ground, lower lip caught and worried between his teeth.

"He doesn't remember anything since he went into the pod, Maria," Alex finishes for him. 

"I'm sorry," Michael tells her as his body draws back towards Alex. He reaches down to grab his hand, to reassure, calm the discomfort.

Alex flinches back, not letting him get a grip. "Guerin. She's your girlfriend," Alex says, sounding tired. Beyond tired. "You're with her, not me."

Michael blinks and looks at them both, because that can't be right. "What? Are we… are we sharing?" He asks.

Maria's eyes are so sad when she shakes your head. "We're not sharing," And then, after a breath. "Ex."

"What?"

"I'm Guerin's ex girlfriend. Sharing wasn't exactly-- we're not going to do that again."

"That's not fair," and Alex sounds incredulous, horrified. "You can't do that to him, it's not his fault he got hit with a memory erasing drug. He doesn't know what he's doing."

Maria looks angry in that moment. Not-- just overcome. He feels like-- did he do this? What did he do? She says, "Alex, come on, is this fair to me? This is Michael, stripped to the bone and he has no idea who I am!"

"He doesn't know who I am either!" Alex shouts back, in obvious frustration.

Michael looks from one of them to the other. Maria is beautiful and sad and a part of him wants to reach out and offer comfort, reassure, something. But Alex-- "she's right, that's not fair," he repeats. "I might not remember, but I know who you are. I do know."

"Yeah," she whispers and she forces a smile. "Look, it's ok. We all know who Guerin is. Strip away all the bullshit and this is who he is, he's yours." 

"But all that bullshit, it matters, Maria. His experiences matter."

It's Michael who intervenes, shakes his head, looks at Maria, trying to understand and says, "thank you. I'm sorry."

"You can apologize when you remember what you did," Maria mutters. Then stops. "No, it's not your fault. Or not just your fault."

Alex takes in a deep breath. "Look, we have a conspiracy to stop. Michael might have defused one bomb, but there are others."

"What?" Maria demands and then they're interrupted by lights on the road. Vehicles. Michael doesn't tense because Alex is steady. Prepared.

It's not long before people are spilling out of vehicles and he's grabbed at by a woman, tall and fair and angry and he grins at her so big. His last memory of her is of a little girl, brave and determined, his near sister.

"You idiot, Michael," she hisses into his ear, as if she's saying she loves him. So he says that and she glares at him.

And then there's a man striding up and smiling, with long legs and floppy dark hair. Michael feels his own eyes widen, because-- "you're ok," he says. "Everything turned out ok. We protected you."

And there's confusion, people talking over each other and Alex's voice, cool and calm and grounding. "Focus people," he says and everyone looks at him.

Michael too, proud as hell, watching him speak, direct.

It's a long next couple of hours, but he just gets prouder. He's got a job himself, which is keeping everyone safe and he's going to do it.

**

They have bombs to defuse, which is the easy part.

Watching Alex move without touching him is harder.

**

It's the aftermath that leaves him and Alex back in his truck outside of Alex’s place, with Alex, very rationally, trying to leave.

"I can't let you do anything you'll regret when you remember," Alex is telling him. Steady, looking straight ahead and not at Michael. "I will not be another regret to you. Not again."

Michael tries, he tries to bring the right words. "My powers are coming back," he says.

Alex frowns, a little line between his eyebrows tightening. "You think that will jog your memory?"

“I think it will let me show you that you couldn’t be a regret,” Michael offers instead, looking Alex in the face. “I’m not-- I’m not human, Alex. There can’t be someone else. Not for me.”

“That doesn’t match up with my experience,” Alex mutters. 

“So you’re finding moving on easy?” Michael asks him. 

Alex shrugs. “I’m not you and I have other damage that makes it complicated for me. None of this is what I’d call easy.”

“Let me show you? Please?” Michael whispers.

Alex swallows hard, face twisting, head shaking. His voice is steady. “How? Show me how?” But he’s looking at Michael’s hands, which are glowing now, red and bright with power he hasn’t been able to touch before.

“With me? Only if you want,” Michael adds, softer. His veins are thrumming with the energy, with the urge to reach out and touch the life that’s so close to him. 

“You asked me to,” Alex says. A helpless, tired shrug. “You said please. Of course I want to.”

He holds out his hands, and Michael takes them. They’re cooler than they should be, or they feel like that, but the grip is perfect, and Michael smiles. Winds his fingers around Alex’s strong, narrow wrists.

Smiles and invites Alex inside.

And then--brushed up against another mind, fully, he remembers. He remembers everything.

All at once, like a wall of water, pressing him down. The pod and the group home and the child, the one they were supposed to protect and everything, everything that happened after.

It hurt. Water hurt in force like this, choked, strangled. 

He remembers Alex, finding and having, all at once and perfect. Losing, like a crash, worse, worse.

“I’m sorry,” Alex whispers, more of a mental thought. “I guess I am tangled up in everything shitty that ever happened to you.”

He remembers Alex, and the perfect weight of his hand, and what it meant to be stripped down to the boy he was supposed to be, the utter certainty of rightness. 

“Nah,” Michael says, loudly, loudly. “Don’t do that to yourself. I’m an idiot, listening to me never helped anyone.”

The mental quirk of humor matched the tilt of Alex’s mouth. “I can’t argue that.”

“You don’t know what it was like, seeing you without all that shit in my head.” But Michael can show him now, so he does. The first real time, out in his truck, playing Alex’s brother’s guitar. The times before, casual and fleeting, but there. This time. Remembering nothing, nothing but knowledge.

“You saw me and you wanted everything,” Alex, says, and it’s small, muted when Alex is anything but. “You wanted to… kids and a house and… everything.” 

And Michael laughs, low and rueful. “The past tense always gets us, sweetheart. Thing is, I still do. Any way I can earn it?”

“You really are an idiot, Guerin.” Alex kisses him, rough and sharp on his mouth, teeth to it. 

There is a mark around his wrists in the shape of Michael’s fingers, iridescent and lovely. Claiming and claimed. He’ll need to pull his sleeves down low or everyone will know. Everyone will know.

“You’re mine, you’re for me,” Michael tells him.

“Yes,” Alex says. He says yes.

On the side of the road, a summer dried out flower perks up its head and blooms a brilliant blue.

**Author's Note:**

> Come yell at me on Tumblr @ninswhimsy. Your kudos and comments give me life.


End file.
